So.... how was everyone's Pesach?

Hello everybody!The forum seems to be a bit asleep - and so was I, as far as digital life goes. I hope everybody is doing well and had a lovely Pesach!

I moved house just before Pesach - so symbolic, I moved from a place where I didn't feel alright - ith neighbours trying to convert me and telling me 'Jesus is crying for you' and other neighbours calling at my house at all possible and impossible times (Friday night while I was blessing my candles, for example...) to this lovely place with fellow students (one of them being Jewish too, whoohoo) and artists....

I celebrated Pesach with them. Well, last year I really hoped that this year I would be ready to celebrate Pesach as I should, having no chametz in te house and having a seder and all that, but it didn't really work out that way.... I hope next year it will!

But I still wanted to celebrate and also share the joy with those who might appreciate it - and my new housemates do! So on the first night of Pesach, I didn't make a seder, but I did make a festive meal with a lamb tajine with dates and rice (normally I would do couscous, but that's chametz - a week without chametz isn't that difficult because of the bread, it's the couscous, the bulgur and the pasta! - if I wouldn't eat kitnyot either, I really wonder WHAT I should eat....) and parve gremshelish (matzah) pie as a desert. The gremshelish pie is a family recipe from a few generations back my cousin shared with me, and I felt happy and honoured to make something my granny made, for this special occasion! I blessed the candles for yom tov, shared some symbolic matzah with the housmates, and we made a toast to life -and had a lovely candlelit meal together. Then we watched 'Prince of Egypt' - that movie about the Exodus story.

It was so nice to share some of the yom tov joy with people I appreciate! Just a few months ago, I would not have deemed this possible anywhere in the near future. It may not have been a 'kosher pesach' but in comparison to last year, when I couldn't really celebrate because celebrating on your own is not really festive, it is a huge change.Who knows what lies in the future and where Life will bring me?

So glad you got to enjoy Pesach! Don't worry, as time goes on, you'll enjoy it more and more.

Also glad to hear you moved away from those who, as far as I can see, didn't really appreciate who you are and what you believe.

My Pesach was a quite one, but sometimes that is good as well.

Yeah, it has been quite around here lately???

Waiting to see the forum "full of action" once again.

Now that we are "out of Egypt", it's time to teach our children generation after generation.

Just watched a movie last night titled "No Place On Earth". A story of how 38 people or so lived in caves in the Ukraine for over 500 days during the war and how they survived. It was a good reminder since today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Watching "Prince of Egypt" is a great entry-level substitute for the "maggid" part of the seder in which the Exodus story is retold. In fact this year, my husband tried to get a group from our minyan together to watch the DVD of the movie before Pesach, but everyone got too busy with the cleaning and preparations so it didn't happen. One thing I like about that movie is that it presented the story with a Jewish slant. Here is commentary about that by the former chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (home of the oldest Conservative rabbinical school):Midrash in The Prince of Egypt

How lovely that you were able to use a family Passover recipe! I don't have any such recipes since I am a convert and my husband's closest relative to grow up observant was his paternal grandfather who had become secular as an adult and died when my husband was 10 years old. Also, as a male, he was less likely to know as much about cooking. Next closest was my husband's paternal grandmother's sister who was the widow of a Conservative rabbi. But I never even thought ask her for recipes since I met her when she was in 90's and I was only at an early stage in my Jewish journey, and none of her four children even kept kosher as adults. Now that I think about it, I still should have asked if they had recipes, but the ones we were in touch with passed away in the past several years.

Oh well, I did try some new recipes that I found on the Internet that were quite successful: Passover pancakes made with matzah cake meal and applesauce and whipped eggs that were great with the kosher for Passover real maple syrup I bought, stuffed cabbage with matzoh instead of rice, a toffee apple cake (even though I guessed wrong and tried to make the toffee drizzle with frozen liquid non-dairy creamer instead of the powdered kind---salvaged with some potato starch and the above syrup).

I'm still tired from Passover which is normal given the exertions of hauling out a bunch of plastic bins with Passover stuff out from a crawl space under the house plus cleaning and kashering and changing over the cookware and dishes for Passover. During the holiday, we attended a first night seder at a friend's house, then hosted a second night seder and had guests for Friday night dinner and others for Saturday lunch. My sister-in-law came in from Virginia for the first half of the holiday and my daughter was home from Brandeis for the whole holiday.

Yes, I also feel like watching Prince of Egypt is a way to 'remember the Exodus story' which is one of the most important things to do at Pesach, I think....Thank you for the link, I am reading it now :)

And indeed, it is so great to have a family recipe! I am very happy my cousin shared it with me, as it feels like I can connect to Pesach on a more personal level, as something which actually belongs not just to me but, in a way, to those close to me, too....and the housemates loved the gremshelish!